DS visited Myanmar (Burma) in mid-June to examine the country’s rapidly evolving political reforms and how these are likely to affect the HLP rights of its citizens.

DS Director, Scott Leckie, delivered a speech on the opportunity for Myanmar to protect HLP rights during this time of political transition at the Chatrium Hotel in Yangon (Rangoon) for a seminar organised by UN Habitat; Understanding Housing, Land and Property Rights: Challenges in a Changing Myanmar.

DS will be releasing two new reports on HLP rights in Myanmar in coming weeks; a blueprint for improving HLP rights protections, and HLP rights issues within the peace processes in the east of the country.

Customary Land Dispute Mechanisms in Myanmar - New Report by DS & NRC

DS Calls for a National HLP Summit in Myanmar

New DS & NRC Report on Obstacles to HLP Rights in Northern Mon State

Displacement Solutions was approached and commissioned by DFID to carry out research on the housing, land and property rights issues arising from the reconstruction process, with an emphasis on the planned relocation aspects thereof. Displacement Solutions undertook a three-person mission to Nepal in November 2018 during which time extensive interviews were carried out, field visits made, and film footage taken for the production of a short documentary film which has since been completed. Based on this methodology, this report focuses on aspects of progress to date related to survivors access to housing, land and property either at their homes of origin, or through various relocation and resettlement schemes underway since government led reconstruction work was initiated in late 2015. https://issuu.com/displacementsolutions/docs/nepal_idp_and_hlp_paper...

This report provides an in-depth understanding of customary land dispute resolution in Kayin State, Eastern Bago Region and Shan State and its interaction with the formal statutory Government of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar(GORUM) system. A participatory community-based research approach was used to understand customary practices concerning land, including how land title is defined, enforced and how land disputes are contested, negotiated and resolved at the community level. Based on the perceptions of local people and village leaders in the three research sites, the report identifies current practices as well as prior work on this topic in Myanmar and seeks to identify ongoing dispute resolution mechanisms and practices used by communities in ethnic nationality areas with a view to informing policy and programming on restitution. Key to this analysis is the question of what a genuine restitution process might look like in Myanmar and how customary practices might be integrated into it. Furthermore, if a genuine restitution process was established, what realistic capacity is there to integrate customary dispute mechanisms and authorities into it. Based on in-depth qualitative research in 31 villages across 3 regions/states, it offers an insight into understandings of customary mechanisms that people use to…...

Media Coverage Dvb.no. Interview with Scott Leckie: 'Burma could very easily become the displacement capital or Asia.' Myanmar Times. Article. Government needs to act on land, says NGO. Yangon (26 Oct) – A highly anticipated report released today in Yangon by Displacement Solutions urges the government, opposition parties and civil society groups to urgently convene a national summit to urgently discuss the housing, land and property rights crisis in Myanmar. The report – Myanmar at the HLP Crossroads – details growing problems of land grabbing, land speculation, housing unaffordability and the lack of adequate housing and basic services in the country and calls for a unified and concerted approach to tackle these vital issues for the countries future. Myanmar at the HLP Crossroads is the first comprehensive report to focus on housing, land, and property rights (HLP rights) in Myanmar since President Thein Sein took office in March 2011. According to the main author of the report, Scott Leckie, “Myanmar now finds itself at a critical juncture. Whichever way the country decides to go will decisively shape the housing, land and property realities of everyone in the years to come. The decisions taken now need to well-informed, inspired by the best practices of other…...

Land in south-eastern Myanmar is a critical resource for the mainly rural population which is in need of greater safeguards within the formal, informal and customary systems of land administration. Customary law continues to operate at the village level, largely unchanged since pre-colonial times. While exhibiting many of the positive elements commonly attributed to such systems throughout the developing world, customary laws in relation to the resolution of land disputes are not always effective and equitable, and do not always display qualities which are consistent with rule of law standards. Deficiencies in transparency, accountability and equality have the potential to undermine the ability of marginalised sections of the population to access justice and obtain fair outcomes. Decades of military rule have exacerbated the structural inequalities experienced by Mon, Kayin and other ethnicities in their interactions with government authorities and the parallel administrations of Ethnic Armed Organisations (EAOs). This means that in addition to the large amounts of land-grabbing experienced by the population across Mon State, the avenues of resolving such grievances remain inaccessible to most poor rural populations, due to a combination of fear of authorities, language barriers, lack of knowledge regarding land law and dispute resolution mechanisms beyond the…...